Direct TV News

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I am looking for interesting Direct TV News and rumors from the Internet since last week.

After 3 days of working, finally I am able to compile most of the DirecTV News that I collected in this section :)

Direct TV News - Pegasus Satellite TV Files for Chapter 11: Jun 3, 2004 Jun 3, 2004 -

(Reuters) - Shares of Pegasus Communications Corp. tumbled as much as 32 percent on Thursday, a day after the company said its satellite television subsidiary filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

Pegasus made the filing late Wednesday after DirecTV terminated an exclusive agreement that allowed it to distribute DirecTV service in rural areas.

Direct TV News say that Pegasus vowed to fight the move, which it called "unlawful," and said bankruptcy protection was the best way for it to continue to serve its customers.

"We intend to take all appropriate actions necessary to prevent NRTC and DirecTV from implementing this latest scheme to deprive our shareholders of the substantial value that we have created in our satellite television business," Pegasus Chairman and CEO Mark Pagon said in a statement.

Direct TV News - Pegasus operates a network of 1.1 million DirecTV subscribers through a contract with the National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative. But on Wednesday, DirecTV and the NRTC agreed to terminate that agreement, effectively ending Pegasus' contract as well.

Direct TV News - Pagon said the company would seek a ruling from Bankruptcy Court to restore the contract, as well as damages from DirecTV and NRTC.

But the DirecTV agreement with the NRTC increases the pressure on Pegasus, which appears to be on the losing end of a four-year battle with the largest U.S. satellite television company.

Oppenheimer & Co. analyst Thomas Eagan said he believes the company will have trouble getting a bankruptcy court to agree to a reorganization plan. "Why allow the company to operate when all they do is erode the assets DirecTV has claim to?" he said.

Direct TV News - Pegasus has lost more than 500,000 subscribers over the past two years.

From latest Direct TV News, last month a federal judge ordered Pegasus to pay $62.5 million to DirecTV for past marketing expenses. Pegasus had $127 million in cash at the end of the first quarter of 2004.

Direct TV News - Fisher vs. DirecTV dismissed: 4th June 2004 -

Ex-police officer John Fisher says he joined DirecTV as a senior investigator but instead wound up "as little better than a 'bag man for the mob'."

During his first few days he worked with "the other senior investigator," a man named Dale Herring, Fisher says in his complaint here, going on that Herring explained other DIRECTV clerical employees had sent out letters to suspected satellite thieves and the recipients would be calling in.

Direct TV News"We and the other investigators were to field these phone calls and pressure the callers to pay a sum of money to DIRECTV," says Fisher.

He also said although lawsuits were filed against more than 9,000 people, none went to trial.

Does this seem familiar?

Ultimately, Fisher charged DirecTV with unfair business practices and wrongful termination, seeking unspecified damages and an end to DirecTV's tactics.

But his suit has been dismissed and Los Angeles County Judge Cary Nishimoto has ruled the, "collection efforts that Fisher had been part of were connected with litigation, and were therefore legally privileged," says Kevin Poulson on SecurityFocus here.

Among other allegations, Fisher - who was looking for compensation for himself and "thousands of persons victimized by DirecTV - says between 5% and 10% of people threatened with lawsuits were innocent, and that DirecTV was aware of that fact.

"In April, DirecTV finished a wholesale swap-out of 17 million hack able access cards and shut down its legacy data stream, effectively slamming the door on signal pirates - at least for the moment," says Poulson. "The company's fourth generation smart card, called the "P4," has thus far held up against hackers, but the three earlier versions were all eventually hacked." Source: p2pnet.net News

War on TV piracy blacks out Cubans: 5/01/04 (AP) -

DirecTV's crackdown on signal theft pulled the plug on U.S. programs.

The U.S. government believes Cubans should see more of America on television, and for years, Cubans have been happily complying - cobbling together clandestine satellite systems to pick up everything from the World Series to soap operas.

No longer. Most of those systems have been silenced - not by Fidel Castro but by a U.S. company's war on TV piracy.

"We're sad because we cannot reach our people with so much happiness," said Crystal Larraondo, executive assistant for Los Fonomemecos, the Miami-based Cuban-American comedy team whose show was popular here.

In late April, DirecTV, based in El Segundo, Calif., changed its decoder cards to halt widespread piracy in the United States.

By chance, it knocked out most of Cuba's pirates too.

Hans de Salas, research associate at the University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American studies, called it "an unexpected gift for the Castro government."

But DirecTV had no choice but to go by the book, said Robert G. Mercer, its public-relations director.

Going by the book

"While we understand they have a different motivation than the individuals who are stealing our signal in the U.S., they are still receiving our programming without our authorization and in a part of the world where we do not have a license to operate," he said.

"We have an obligation to our legitimate customers and programming partners to target and take off-line anyone who is using an illegally modified access card," he said.

The few Cubans who use the Dish TV system of U.S.-based EchoStar Communications Corp. are not yet affected, and EchoStar spokesman Steve Cox would not reveal details about possible security updates there. Shifting from DirecTV to Dish would require a different decoder box - one of the hardest pieces of TV hardware to obtain here.

The U.S. government's Office of Cuba Broadcasting targets the island with Television Marti, but its broadcasts are jammed by Castro's regime.

It tried the satellite route, but few Cubans can pick up its signals, which use a different technology and satellite from those used by DirecTV.

On May 6, President Bush promised $18 million to transmit TV Marti from a U.S. military aircraft - a measure that a commentator on Cuban state television described as a "prologue to war."

Official Cuba also has a term for vehemently anticommunist material beamed at the island - "media terrorism."

10,000 dishes nationwide

Anecdotal reports speak of 10,000 satellite-television dishes in Cuba, according to Joe O'Connell, spokesman for the U.S. government's International Broadcasting Bureau, which oversees Television Marti, among other operations.

Dishes serve entire families, and extension lines sometimes connect them to neighboring houses. Taped programs renting for about 25 cents reach a still larger audience.

The government is determined to confine Cubans to the state broadcasting system, where Thursday night's 90-minute discussion show was devoted to "Cuba confronting the fascist policies of Bush."

Few Cubans will talk openly about the dishes: They are strictly banned for homes, and police sometimes raid them to confiscate illegal antennas and fine their owners.

Yet enough money trickles into private hands from tourism and family abroad to finance a multimillion-dollar hidden TV industry.

It includes building or smuggling in satellite dishes, counterfeiting access cards, renting lines to neighbors, and going door to door renting and collecting tapes of popular shows.

An antenna, decoder and counterfeited access card cost $700 to $1,200, depending on scarcity, according to several Cubans who have bought or sold them. That limits the dishes to those with a healthy supply of dollars. A typical Cuban makes about $20 a month.

A man who says he has installed 95 satellite dishes showed a reporter one hidden in a rooftop water tank. From there, he pointed to neighboring houses, counting nine other hidden dishes.

Cubans say they have seen antennas concealed behind apartment windows, in air-conditioner boxes, even in a pigsty.

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